PAA gets ETITO tick, new roommate

The Professional Advisers Association (PAA) has earned a new designation from financial industry training body ETITO.

The PAA has been appointed as a Delegated Assessment Organisation (DAO), which will allow it to offer its members the Level 5 National Certificate in Financial Services - including assessing Standard Sets modules in-house.

The PAA's professional development manager, Jenny Campbell, said "it was important for us to step up to DAO status as it reinforces our commitment to members to make business education as accessible as possible".

As a professional association, the PAA was already delivering training and structured CPD hours, she said.

"Our ability to assess and encourage members who pursue their certificates is a valuable service, and underlines the PAA's mission to make continuing education a painless process for members," Campbell said.

She said achieving DAO status was a key goal following amalgamation of the PAA and the NZMBA in April, creating an association of over 1100 members.

"We are delighted to have this goal ticked off within the first six months of amalgamation" she said.

The announcement coincides with the news that the Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand (IBANZ), and PAA are now sharing offices in the Auckland CBD.

PAA chairman Peter Leitch said this promises to be a valuable collaborative partnership: "Both professional associations were identifying obvious synergies and cost-efficiencies including effective delivery of professional and educational development."

Meanwhile, ETITO (Electrotechnology Industry Training Organisation) has announced that it will be changing its name to The Skills Organisation.

Chief executive Gary Fissenden said, "Our new identity better reflects who we have become and how what we do relates to your industry."

Comments from our readers

On 30 August 2012 at 2:21 pm Amused said:

Meanwhile, ETITO (Electrotechnology Industry Training Organisation) has announced that it will be changing its name to The Skills Organisation.

Can I suggest to the ETITO that given the continuing poor feedback received from advisers about the quality of ETITO's courses and knowledge (or lack off) of their training staff that they undertake some serious "upskilling" themselves before adopting this name change. Otherwise this “rebranding exercise” will just end up been the butt of a lot of jokes from advisers.

On 30 August 2012 at 4:13 pm Andy said:

Agree with you Amused. After doing Standards set B and C and E (Mortgages) recently I could not believe the misinterpretation and fog in the questions. As well as the out-of-date terminology, several of the questions were so ambiguous that you could only get them right by guessing. Who trains the trainers?

On 31 August 2012 at 11:51 am no respect said:

I couldn't agree more with the Amused and Andy, here's hoping the PAA will set better standards than ETITO as Set B questions & answers were so subjective and ambiguous it made a joke of ones experience and knowledge.

On 11 October 2012 at 8:24 pm Mark Jory said:

I found Set B quite easy. I did benefit from completing an IFA roadshow to prepare, but really it was about taking the time to understand the legislation we now operate under. I didn't find more than perhaps one question to be confusing or ambiguous.

The testing will not differ because PAA are now able to do this. Most Set C assessments were completed by DAO Assessors, not the ETITO assessors

On 12 October 2012 at 2:42 pm Dai said:

Could we clarify if a DAO can do Set B testing please as alluded to by comments above? My understanding is that a DAO or for that matter any person/company can hold the training for Set B, however the testing is completed by ETITO only. So the ambiguous questions within that exam will remain.
A second purpose of a DAO is to provide continuing professional development and it is my guess that it is this purpose that the PAA wanted most.